To Rule or To Be Ruled
by periferal
Summary: Kallian Tabris and Alim Surana must save Thedas, in a world only slightly different from the one you're familiar with. Along the way, they'll pick up companions, have interesting encounters, and perhaps even find love. Alternate universe where everyone is either a Dom or a sub. Slash and femmslash.


_This one's pretty much what it says on the tin. _

Kallian woke up to the smell of rotten beer in her nose.

"There's a pretty elf," one of Vaughan's friends said. "You'll do everything I say, won't you?"

His attempt at a dom voice was pathetic, and it wasn't as though Kallian had much experience with any other than her own. The worst part, of course, was that it had probably worked for him before. Well, no, the worse part was how he was fumbling at the fly of his trousers, but one awful aspect of the situation at a time.

"No," Kallian said. "I won't."

They had not tied her up, which implied a scary amount of assumed control. She risked a look behind the man currently towering over her and winced. Vaughan had probably just commanded Shianni to lie still and was now—she could think about it later, once she had gotten herself out of this situation.

"Oh?" the man asked. "You're a feisty one, then?" His breath got worse as he moved closer to her.

"No," Kallian repeated. She sighed. "That's not going to work on me."

"Excuse me?"

She resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. Oh, gods, her best friend was about to be raped mere feet from her, and she was trying to clue in a drunken human man that she was not, in fact, a sub. All this after being kidnapped from her own fucking wedding.

"I'm a dom, you idiot," she said, forgoing the hysterical laugh for a punch to the man's rancid smelling mouth.

He recoiled. "Hey!" he called back to Vaughan. "You said they were all subs!"

"They're all elven women, of course they're all subs!" the lord said. He stood, not even bothering to pull Shianni's dress back down. He would die horribly.

Kallian used the man's distraction to grab the knife he had (very stupidly) left hanging from his belt. Stabbing him in the throat, she let him fall, gurgling blood, as she then advanced on Vaughan.

She noticed two other members of her wedding party, still unconscious, behind Shianni.

"Hey, hey," Vaughan said, putting up his hands defensively. "He woke you up too early, the idiot, there should be more people here. You'll have to fight your way out of the house, everyone here is loyal to me."

"Fuck you," Kallian said. "I'm going to kill you don't let us leave, now."

"You're a bitch with a knife, how difficult could it be for me to kill you?" he asked. He laughed. His laugh was as unpleasant as the rest of him, the same with his smile. "Now die easy, so I can get back to your friend here."

Kallian wanted to scream. She probably would scream, later. Or laugh. Or cry. Or all three! But that was all for later. For now, she was in full fight-or-flight mode, any remaining hesitation at the idea of killing the human in front of her long gone.

He wasn't armed, which made his overconfidence all the more baffling. He swung at Kallian, who ducked and stabbed him in the side.

The face he made might have been comical if it weren't for the entire fucking situation.

She smashed his face in for good measure.

Only then did she rush to Shianni's side. "Hey," she said, "you can move."

Shianni pulled her dress down, standing shakily. "Thanks," she said. "I would have snapped myself out of it, but—"

"Stop it," Kallian said. "It's not your fault. Now—we have creepy humans to kill, and our friends to rescue. Care to join me?"

Shianni grinned. "Sure," she said. She kicked Vaughan's corpse. "I think I'm going to cry, later," she said calmly.

"Same here," Kallian said. "This sucks."

"It really fucking does," Shianni answered.

Kallian felt less upset at hearing about her betrothed's death than she expected. Maybe because she barely knew him, or maybe because after everything else, there wasn't much 'upset' left to feel.

She and Shianni did cry, later, and laugh, Shianni screamed. She screamed a lot and stabbed some random door guard more violently than maybe he deserved. He was only human, after all.

"Let me take the credit," she told Shianni as they neared the alienage. They would have to draw unwanted attention soon enough—two barefoot elven women in torn clothes wasn't that unusual, even here. "I rescued you, and did all the killing."

"They'll take you away forever!" Shianni protested. "You can't do that."

"I can," Kallian said. "Please, let me do this." She bumped Shianni's shoulder with her shoulder. "I can argue bereavement. You can't."

"That's shitty," Shianni said. "But fine."

"It's going to work out," Kallian said. "You know that weird human?"

"The dom who's been staying in the alienage, you mean?"

"Yeah. I think he might be able to help me."

Kallian was proved right later, to her immense relief. It wasn't in the way she had wanted—she would have to leave the alienage forever, and never come back—but Grey Warden-granted immunity was much better than prison or death.

"We need people who know their way around a blade," he said that evening. They would camp on the outskirts of the city; Kallian was technically untouchable, but there was no reason to draw even more trouble to themselves.

"I'm not the best with swords," Kallian admitted. "Mainly knives, and I'm a half-decent lockpick." Stealing felt less wrong when it was from humans and she was starving. Now that she was about to spend a lot of time around humans, she would probably have to break that habit.

"No less useful skills," Duncan said. "You never know what could be hiding in a locked chest—I found a decent pair of gauntlets in such a chest in the Deep Roads, once." He opened and closed his hands to demonstrate. They were of surprisingly good quality for such an origin.

"The Deep Roads?" Kallian asked. She knew almost nothing about them. Even the name did little more than conjure up a vague idea of dwarves. "What are they?"

"A place long given up to the darkspawn by the dwarves," Duncan answered. "They left many things behind, even, it seems, things shaped for men."

"And you went there? Willingly?" She supposed that was what being a Grey Warden was all about, but it was still a terrifying though. Trapped underground with darkspawn? That would have been the stuff of Kallian's nightmares, if her dreams weren't much more focused on recent events.

"On occasion," he said vaguely. "There's not much we can do, there, I fear, but it is my duty, after all, to combat and learn about the Blight, and it seemed wise to see them with my own eyes at least once." He smiled. "The dwarves seemed surprised to see me return."

He stopped. They had reached what would be their campsite.

King Cailan, Kallian decided privately to herself, was an idiot, or something close enough that the difference didn't matter.

He was a sub, which somehow combined with being a royal in such a way that meant he had that sort of expectation that everything would go his way that, while much kinder and less likely to end in kidnapping, reminded her far too much of other, deader human men.

"What I wouldn't give to be in your place," he said, apparently without irony. "I suppose the best I can do is fight by your side in the coming battle."

"You know what Loghain will say to that," Duncan said. The name caught on something in Kallian's memory.

"Do you mean Teyrn Loghain?" she asked. "He's here?"

"Of course he's here," Cailan said, laughing. "He wouldn't be anywhere else, it would mean he wouldn't be able to nag me."

King Cailan was definitely an idiot, then, Kallian thought, revising her own opinion. How could he even think to go against _Loghain Mac Tir_'s advice?

"I read about him," Kallian said quietly.

"Yes, yes," Cailan said. "Already in the storybooks and doesn't want anyone else to share his fame." He said all of this good-naturedly.

Thankfully, the conversation didn't last much longer than that.

"Go see Alistair once you're ready," Duncan said. "He's most likely near his tent, but you should run into him as long as you don't leave the encampment."

"Right," Kallian said.

Alistair turned out to be just as blond as Cailan but much less stupid. He wore a collar, barely visible under his armor. Kallian didn't ask—she knew people outside the alienage tended to choose how they paired off, and she had better things to be curious about. He seemed nice enough, and not as clueless as one might expect. He presumably knew how to use the sword and shield he carried, since he was a Grey Warden.

Of her three fellow potential Wardens, Kallian liked exactly one.

His name was Alim Surana, he was an elf, and he had also spent most of his life confined in one place. That he was around Kallian's age helped. That he was a mage was fascinating. Kallian had almost no experience with magic, and she was excited to see some in action.

Daveth seemed fine, but Jory was cowardly in the same irritating way that Cailan was brave. Both seemed slightly suspicious of her, Jory even going so far as to express his surprise that a woman could be a Grey Warden. They were also both suspicious of Alim, though for different, more magical, reasons.

A quest to go find some treaties and collect darkspawn blood (disgusting) with only them as companions would have been suicide, she thought. Much better that Alistair and Alim were along.

"Have you ever seen darkspawn?" she asked him. They were in the backmost rant of their little expedition, Alistair heading up the front and Daveth and Jory walking next to each other right behind.

"No," he said. "I didn't exactly leave the Tower that much. Or at all." He turned his head every few moments, seemingly intent on absorbing everything it was possible to see at once. "I've read about them, though."

Barely a few paces into the forest proper, Alistair called a halt. "There's darkspawn up ahead," he said. "Are any of you good at stealth?"

"I'm okay at it," Kallian said. "I can't turn invisible, and I'm not used to woodsy terrain, but I can walk quietly."

"Go, take a look," he said. "The moment you see something, come back immediately. I cannot risk you confronting them alone. Run back towards us, if they see you at all."

Command sat poorly with him, Kallian thought, but she did as he said. She didn't ask how she would know she had found darkspawn.

The ground rose up somewhat ahead, and she was able to keep herself relatively hidden as she looked out over at the other side of the small hill.

At first, she couldn't quite believe what she saw. The things ahead had the general shape of a human or an elf, though two were the height of children, and held weapons and wore armor, but their features were foul and twisted, and they chattered to each other in a language that hurt her ears to listen to.

"There are five. Two of them are shorter." she told Alistair. She wouldn't learn technical terms like "Hurlock" or "Genlock" until later. She unsheathed her knives, leaving her bow on her back. "Will these be enough to hurt those… _things_?" she asked.

"We must hope so," he said. He looked over at Alim. "You, Surana," he said. "What spells do you know?"

"I've dabbled at healing," the mage said quietly. "And I can freeze water and summon lightning—never tried those on people, though, so I don't know—"

"Good thing darkspawn aren't people, then," Alistair said. "That should be useful enough."

The five of them walked carefully over the hill. Kallian wondered whether it would be possible to try and talk to the things. Probably not. She decided, as they walked, that she would try to stay out of notice, hoping that the flashy mage and the big, clanky warriors would draw most of the attention.

The two small ones ran towards their small group, along with one of the big ones. The other two big ones stood back a ways. They were armed with bows.

Hoping her plan would work, Kallian moved carefully in a large circle, going off the path just enough that the minimal tree cover could hide her movement. Of course, everything depended on the monsters having similar vulnerabilities to humans, but that seemed like a reasonable assumption. Duncan would have mentioned had it been otherwise.

The thing proved her correct by crumpling like a bag when she drove her knives into either side of its neck. In fact, it seemed less well put together than a person, somehow.

Miraculously, she was able to do the same thing to the other one with a bow. A quick glance at its bow showed that it was not better than hers, and she looked up to see how the others were fairing.

Alistair was in the process of knocking over a short one with his shield, driving his sword through its chest as it lay, dazed. The other two darkspawn lay, decapitated and dusted with a fine layer of what appeared to be frost.

"Freezing them was easier than I thought it would be," Alim said grimly as Kallian walked over.

"Thank you for dealing with the archers," Alistair said. "That made everything a whole lot easier for us, especially with them immobilized."

Daveth took that moment to go off and vomit. He had gore on his blade, while Jory did not; Kallian assumed he had cut off the heads of at least one of the frozen darkspawn.

Alistair sighed. "I can't say you get used to it, since I've only been at this about half a year, but apparently one does get used to how gross they are," he said. He looked at the five corpses. "This should be enough to collect the blood we need," he said. He pulled vials from his bag, handing one to Jory, one to Kallian, and two to Alim. "You'll need to get Daveth's for him," he said. "He seems a bit… sick, right now."

Collecting the blood was easy, but gross, and suddenly Kallian wished very much to return to Ostagar and get it all over with. But, alas, there were still scrolls to find, and so, returning to their original formation, they set off deeper into the Wilds.

At least they had started out fairly early in the day.

Kallian made a series of almost correct assumptions when she first saw Morrigan.

"Oh," she thought to herself. "A Chasind apostate. I wonder what she's doing here?"

She had never learned any real fear of or hatred for apostates—she had little patience for the Chant, preferring the few stories the ancient elves that her fellow residents of the alienage remembered—and would have politely inquired after her name had Daveth and Alistair not immediately drawn their weapons. Jory seemed to forget that he had a sword and so she paid no attention to him.

Alim, for his part, held his staff tightly in his left hand.

"Why all this?" Morrigan asked. She would later mention how much difficulty she had engaging with others in an apparently sincere manner, but those difficulties did not extend, it seemed, to feigning helplessness, albeit quite temporarily. "I am no threat to you. If you think me Chasind, I promise, they all fled North long ago."

"What are you?" Alim asked. He walked closer to her, past Daveth and Jory, but just behind Alistair.

"An interesting choice of words," she asked. She smiled. "You are the only one without a sword, and yet you do not cower before me. I am a human, as far as I can tell."

"How reassuring," Kallian said.

"And you—" she said, turning her attention on Kallian. "You are the only woman. How unfortunate for you. You do not draw your knives, though I see them well enough."

Kallian shrugged. It could've been worse.

"What are your names, then?"

Jory seemed about to speak. She held up a hand. "The elves, I mean," she said.

"Alim Surana."

"Kallian Tabris. Who are you?"

"I am Morrigan, Witch of the Wilds," she said. "I suppose that's another answer to _what_." Daveth shuddered and covered his face. She laughed.

_She has a nice laugh_, Kallian thought. She frowned. _This is not the time for that!_

"This is a Grey Warden fort," Alistair said. He seemed irritated by her, which, Kallian thought, was probably fair.

"The Grey Wardens are long gone from this place," Morrigan answered. She stepped around what appeared to be some sort of large box. "And even the Chasind do not come here, an old temple, long since picked clean of all valuables. State your business."

"How dare you give us commands?" Jory asked, butting in. He was finally holding his sword, but badly. Was he trying to intimidate her? It wasn't working.

"Oh, you misunderstand," she said. "I am far from the sort to _give_ commands—but you are the trespassers, not I. What are you doing here?"

"I am a Grey Warden," Alistair said. "We are here for the treaties."

Morrigan kicked the box. It fell, the lid tumbling off. It was empty. "You mean these treaties?"

A sick feeling bloomed in the pit of Kallian's stomach. She wasn't well-versed in politics outside of the small world of the alienage, but she had the feeling that without the treaties the different groups around Ferelden would be less willing to give aid.

"What have you done with them?" Alistair asked after a moment. The same horror Kallian felt was in his voice.

"Nothing," Morrigan said. "They have not been here for quite some time."

"Where are they?" Alistair asked. He had not put away his sword and shield.

She smiled. "You will have to follow me," she said. "My mother took them." She looked at Alim for a moment, shook her head, and turned around. "Well?" she asked over her head. "

"There's more of you?" Daveth asked weakly.

Morrigan's smile widened, now showing teeth. "You have a choice, oh Grey Wardens. Follow me, and perhaps you shall find your precious treaties, or wander the wilds at the mercy of the darkspawn."

"Well," Alistair said. He looked helplessly at the four initiates. "I suppose we follow, then."

"This is a bad idea," Daveth said.

The walk to Flemeth's house was long enough for a conversation, one which led to darker reminisces than Kallian intended.

"Have you ever met an apostate?" she asked Alim. They were again in the back rank. She felt like she ought to whisper, but Morrigan didn't seem the type to become easily offended.

To her surprise, Alim responded at first by hiding his face with his free hand. "A moment," he said. "It seems this is still difficult for me to talk about."

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to…" Kallian said, confused.

"It's fine," he said. "It's just—yes, actually. I have."

"How?" Kallian asked. "You were in the tower your whole life. Their whole _thing_ is preventing that."

He smiled thinly. "You would think that," he said. He looked over at Alistair. "He's actually the reason why I left the Circle."

"Alistair?"

Alim shook his head. "No, no," he said. "An old friend, Jowan—he turned out to be a blood mage." He winced. "They were going to make him _tranquil_, Kallian," he said. "No one deserves that. Or at least, he didn't. Even if he did trick me and bail on his dominant completely."

"Did Duncan rescue you just at the right moment too, then?" Kallian asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Jowan escaped, and Knight-Commander Gregoir wasn't happy with what little role I played in that, even though I didn't know anything about it, and they—" He winced again. "Sorry," he said. "I can't say this next part, yet."

"That's fine," Kallian said. "Just because I feel like shouting what happened to me from the rooftops doesn't mean everyone reacts the same way."

"What did happen to you?" he asked. "You say Duncan saved you. What did he save you from?"

"Certain death at the hands of city guards, most likely," she said. "I didn't mind the alienage, so much. But this _shem_ came and took me away on my wedding day—" she laughed again, this one a hoarse, angry thing that sounded like it was ripped from her throat against her will. "Let's just say there are some men who'll never touch an elven girl again."

Alim was smart enough to put the pieces together. "Did you kill them all?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "My husband-submissive-to-be died trying to save me—tragic, seeing as I managed to save myself just fine—but I rescued the rest of my wedding party. The problem, of course, is that slaughtering a human lord and all his friends tends to bring the wrath of other humans down on the collective head of the whole alienage, and my options were death, death for all my friends, or becoming a Grey Warden."

"Don't feel too disappointed," Alim said. "That could still be death."

Kallian laughed, this time genuinely.

"What's so funny?" Daveth demanded, reminding Kallian abruptly of his presence. "We could be about to die, and you're laughing!"

"I'm sorry, Daveth," Kallian said. "Would you prefer I weep like a good elven girl? Snivel, perhaps? It's been years since I begged, but I'm sure I could still get up a good snivel."

Daveth frowned, but that didn't matter, because Alim was grinning.

"I've never said nothing about you being an elf," Daveth said.

"Damn," Kallian said. "You don't want a snivel after all." She winked at Alim.

The other elf lost it. Kallian raised an eyebrow. He shook his head.

"That's a terrible innuendo," he said. "No one uses that to mean that."

"I didn't say anything," she said, amused by his excessive mirth. "You just thought it.

Any further conversation was cut off by Morrigan's bored, "We're here." Kallian wondered how much of the conversation she had heard, and whether the answer to that question mattered.

Alistair, treaties in hand, set a much faster pace out of the wilds than he had set coming in.

"Well, she gave me the creeps," Alim said, about half way through the walk, immediately after he'd stopped to collect a flower. They'd encountered other groups of darkspawn, in far fewer numbers than Kallian had expected. There had also been the odd wolf, but Alim had been able to take care of those all on his own. Being able to shoot frost out of your hands, it turned out, was quite useful against seemingly rabid animals.

"Which one?" Kallian asked. "The scary hot witch lady, or the scary old witch lady?"

"Both?" Alim said. "But mostly the old witch. There's something off about her."

"Your magical senses tell you that?" Kallian asked. She was only about a quarter joking.

He shook his head. "No," he said. "It's just, if she is _the _Witch of the Wilds, then that means she's old."

"How old?"

"Older than the oldest person you've ever met several times over," Alim said. "I knew being a Grey Warden would mean running into strange creatures, but I never thought—"

"I guess the Blight itself is a bunch of legends coming true," Kallian said. "It makes sense, then, that we have to deal with all this other crazy shit."

"I suppose," Alim said. "Do you think there's really an Archdemon?"

"I can't imagine why Duncan would lie." Killian fiddled with the vial of blood she was holding. "I wonder what they'll make us do with this," she said.

"I tried to ask Alistair about the joining," Alim said. "He said he couldn't tell me anything. I suppose I could have ordered him to tell me—"

"It wouldn't have worked," Kallian said. "Violation aside, he has a dom."

"You think so?" Alim asked.

"He's collared," Kallian answered.

"Huh," Alim said. "I didn't notice." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I also can't imagine he'd be very receptive to orders from an elven mage, dom or no. It's all so much more complex than people think, after all."

"How much have you thought about this?" Kallian asked.

Alim laughed, seemingly a bit embarrassed. "I haven't thought about it that much—I'd only just stopped being an apprentice when I was conscripted—but I've read stuff that talks about how the odds of a command taking depends entirely on how receptive the sub is feeling, what state of mind they're in—"

"Whether they've just woken up after being knocked out—" Kallian muttered darkly.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said. "Continue."

"It's probably connected to the Fade, somehow."

"Really?" she asked. "You mean the same thing that lets you do magic?"

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "What gives commands their weight is something like magic, though not quite. It's like—it's like there's some innate tendency either way in us that's being magnified, somehow. I'll stop myself now, before I become too metaphorical and say things such as _right power exchange is like proper use of magic,_ but there's one last strange thing I want to say. Tranquils aren't doms or subs."

"Really?" Kallian asked. "What are they?"

"Scary," Alim said, suddenly angry again. He calmed himself down. "Sorry if that was a bit much, just now. I know a lot of people don't want to think about dynamics much outside of how it directly affects them.

"It's fine," Kallian said. "Cool, even. Does this mean subs are more susceptible to demons, or something?"

"No, no," he said. "The reverse is true, apparently, though that conception is also probably nonsense. Dominant maleficar convinced they can command demons, and all that." His expression darkened. "They say blood mages can use a darker form of command, one that works on anyone who isn't properly guarded."

"Oh," Kallian said. That was just scary.

He waved his hand. "This is all theory," he said. "For all I know, the Chantry's right when they call it a whim of the Maker."

"I don't know," Kallian said, but she kept her doubts about the Chantry to herself. That was not something to break a friendship over, not this early on.

"What'd you get the wilds flower for?" she asked, eventually. She'd meant to ask as he'd picked it up but had gotten distracted.

"The houndmaster at Ostagar mistook me for a servant and tried to order me to fetch something for him—"

"You should have kicked his teeth in," Kallian said, assuming she knew where the story was going. She had no idea how a flower could have anything to do with it, but hey, any opportunity to justifiably fight a human was—

"No, no," Alim said, cutting off her thoughts. "After he apologized, he told me one of his dogs was sick, and asked for help muzzling it."

"And you did that?"

"It seemed to like me." He smiled. "So I'm bringing the houndmaster this flower, in hopes that it'll help him cure the dog."

"That's sweet," she said. She shook her head. "Here I was, ready to throw down, and it turns out you're just being a decent person."

"Thank you, for being so ready to defend my honor," Alim said. He was almost serious, which made it better.

"I suppose if you needed to you could always just electrocute them," Kallian said.

He sighed. "That would just get me hunted by Templars," he said.

"You could electrocute the Templars?"

Alim shook his head in mock disappointment.

The conversation continued in that vein for the rest of the journey. As Ostagar loomed into view, Kallian found herself wondering again what exactly the Joining would entail. She wasn't scared, exactly, just anxious, like she'd been the day of her wedding.

Hopefully, things would go better this time around.

Kallian woke up to a pounding headache and the taste of death in her mouth. For a brief, horrible moment, that was familiar enough for her to expect to see a man rapidly taking his pants off the moment she opened her eyes. Then, she remembered herself, exhaled, moved her tongue around her mouth to try and remedy some of the grossness, and stood up.

She was alive.

She looked at Daveth and Jory's corpses. So much for them, she thought. She felt somewhat bad for them—apparently Daveth had a family, which sucked, but hey, she had a family too—but not bad enough to mourn them.

Alim lay on the ground, still. Concern for him drove out nearly all thoughts of the taste in her mouth, the pounding in her head, the strange dreams she had just woken from.

"Isn't there—" she started. Duncan shook his head. She fell silent.

Finally, Alim stirred, sitting up and retching bile onto the stone floor next to him. "So _that's_ why you're so secretive about this," he said, wiping his mouth. "Maker's breath."

He stood. He and Kallian looked at each other for a long moment. She didn't know what he was thinking, but she was searching his face for any sign of taint. Nothing. Just his face.

"You have a tattoo over your left eye," she said, abruptly, as she broke eye contact. He had brown eyes. They were nice.

"I think my parents did that," he said, bringing a hand up to touch the tattoo. "They were Dalish."

"They were?" He'd never mentioned that.

"That's what I heard from the First Enchanter. He only ever spoke to them once; I was left at the Circle as a baby."

Before Kallian could inquire further (didn't the Dalish usually just raise their mages as apostates?), Duncan coughed. They turned to looked at him.

"I'm glad you both made it," he said. He smiled warmly. "Half is good, for a Joining."

"I don't know," Alistair said. He looked dubiously at the two bodies. "More people lived in mine."

"No matter," Duncan said. He placed a hand on the small of Alistair's back, who ducked his head slightly. "The two of you, go find some wood for a pyre. We burn their bodies tonight, before the battle."

"Why?" Alim asked.

"The taint is within them," he said. "As it is in you."

"The taint?" Kallian checked her hands. They looked perfectly normal.

"I shall explain around the pyre," Duncan said. "Now, go."

They went.

_"__Where will the pyre be?" Alistair asked. It would take Kallian and Alim a decent amount of time to find enough wood; the Wilds were a swamp, first and foremost, in this place, and damp. _

_"__Outside our tents," Duncan said. "The stone will serve well enough."_

_Alistair sighed. "I wish we could warn them."_

_"__If we warned them, no one would ever join." Duncan smiled. "Would you, had you known?"_

_"__I don't know," Alistair said. "I really don't."_

_Duncan moved his hand not on Alistair's back up to the collar, letting his fingers rest on it for just a moment. "Thank you, again, for this," he said. "Come," he said. "Let us drag the bodies where the spot will be, and then, we can be alone." He took both his hands away._

_"__Thank you," Alistair said, voice barely above a whisper._

Watching the bodies burn was strange. Kallian hadn't had to deal with all the men she killed, escaping Vaughan's house. But Grey Wardens, it seemed, had the privilege to care for their own dead, and that was often more than the alienage elves could say.

"That could have been us," Alim said. He stared into the flames with an unreadable expression on his face. "This is different from all the dead darkspawn."

"Have you never seen a body before?"

"That's not it," he said. "People died at the Circle. Mages aren't immortal, not good ones. I've just never watched someone _die_ before."

"It doesn't get easier," Kallian said. "I promise." She put a hand on his knee.

"You know," he said. "That's strangely comforting."

"I'm glad," Kallian said. "I'm not particularly good at comforting. I comforted Shianni by letting her kick a man's face in."

"Did it work?" he asked.

She nodded. "Somewhat," she said. "You know," she continued, after a while. "It could have been us, but it wasn't. They're dead, and we have to fight the archdemon."

"You say that like it's going to be easy," he said.

"I'm sure it will be," she said. "Do the dreams ever stop?" she asked Alistair. He and Duncan sat next to each other, on the opposite side of the pyre.

"No," he said. He looked at Duncan. "Do they?"

"No," he said. "That's the underside to our ability to sense them."

He had explained everything, or at the very least the part of everything he considered important, moments after the fire had been lit. Now, they were just waiting for the bodies to burn down, and then for the signal for the battle to come.

"They do become less frequent, outside of a Blight," Duncan admitted. He shook his head. "Best not to dwell on this sort of thing. Ours is a hard business, and I fear Loghain does not understand why we are important."

"I'm sure he knows what he's doing," Kallian said.

Duncan made a vague noise in the back of his throat. "I hope your faith in him is borne out," he said.

She didn't know how to reply to that.

Kallian realized, as the fire burned down, that she hadn't moved her hand from Alim's knee. More than that, he hadn't asked her to remove it either.

She pulled her hand away suddenly, looking down at her legs. "I'm sorry," she said.

Alim looked up at her, surprised. "I don't—" he said. "I didn't mind."

Duncan and Alistair chose that moment to stand, heading in the direction of their tent.

"Do you think…?" Kallian asked, trailing her voice off. She nodded in the direction of the two human wardens.

"Oh, almost certainly," Alim said. He smoothed invisible wrinkles out of his robes. "It makes sense they would want to spend some time together before the coming battle."

"What do you think of our chances?"

Alim thought for a while, looking up at the broken pillars of the ruins. "I don't know," he said. "No other Blight has been ended so quickly, but King Cailan speaks as though the battle's already been won." He sighed. "I hope it will go well."

"I hope so, too."

The two of them lapsed back into silence.

"I didn't mind," Alim said.

Kallian stared at him, confused. He couldn't mean…?

"Your hand on my knee," he said. He flushed, suddenly, looking away, hands held tightly in his lap. "Look, I know we've only known each other for barely a day, and from you've said, I understand if you wouldn't—"

"Do you…" If she misread this, it could go very badly. Especially since they were both doms. "You know I'm a dom, right?"

He nodded. "If you're not… it's fine." He chanced a look at her face. He seemed to be looking for any sign of her reaction.

Kallian took a moment to look at him. He had lighter skin than any elf she knew from back in the alienage, and kept his long, light-blond hair up in a low ponytail. Possibly due to growing up in a circle, he had a slighter build than she usually saw, his robes hanging loosely off his body.

She realized with a start that she kept comparing him mentally to Nelaros. Her dead fiancé had been nice, and it had been sad when he died, but she had barely known him. He'd been a sub, sure, and Alim wasn't, but that wasn't important for something that would hopefully be nothing more than just a friendly encounter.

"I think… I think I would like to spend some time with you, in that way," she said. "You're not a human man, for one thing."

"Such a stunning endorsement," Alim said wryly. "Are you okay with me being a dom?" She appreciated him asking her the same question she'd asked him.

"Yeah," she said.

"You can tell me to go away at any time," Alim said.

"You're weirdly cool about this," Kallian said. "Are you more experienced than I thought?"

Alim laughed awkwardly. "Uhhh," he said. "I've spent my whole life in a relatively enclosed space with a small group of people. We ended up—"

"Don't tell me the circle was just a mad orgy. That's not the impression the Chantry would want to give, anyway." Kallian was amused, now, which cut through a lot of her awkwardness, if not Alim's.

"No, no," Alim said. He was blushing harder than he had been. Kallian wondered suddenly if just his face (and ears) reddened when he was embarrassed, or if he was the kind of person who got red splotches on his chest and shoulders, too. "We just experimented a lot with each other. Except Jowan and Lily—" he sighed. "It was stupid, that it wasn't allowed, but he _abandoned _her…" he cut himself off. "Are you okay if I explain later?" he asked.

"Hey," Kallian said. "I haven't told you that many details about my tragic past, either."

"You've told me enough," he said.

"Maker, we keep doing this," she said. "You want to have sex with me?"

He nodded.

"Awesome," Kallian said. She exhaled. "We really don't have that much time before nightfall, and I'm not actually sure where I'm going to sleep after the battle—"

"I have a tent," Alim said quickly.

"I was going to suggest you just finger me right here," Kallian said, a little too nervous to pull the blunt statement off as well as she had hoped, but oh well. "But whatever you're comfortable with."

Alim glanced significantly at the pyre. "_Here_?" he asked.

"I suppose it is a little ghoulish—"

"Not to say a little public."

"—But it's not like anyone would notice." They were at the very edge of where the Grey Wardens were camped out, easy sight of either of them blocked by Duncan's tent. "Even if they did, isn't that the fun of it?"

"…fuck," Alim said quietly.

Kallian grinned. "If you want, instead, I can just push my hand under your robes. You'd have to stay quiet, though."

"I thought you were inexperienced?"

"In variety, certainly, but do you think Nelaros and I did absolutely nothing before we got married?"

"I think the opposite is usually true," Alim said. "But all joking aside, as much as the idea appeals to the awful part of my brain, I really, really don't think doing this here is a good idea."

Kallian sighed. "Fair enough." She stood, reaching out her hand for Alim to take. "Lead me to your tent, then?"

"I'd be more than happy to," he said.

"You know, I'm not surprised you wear underwear under that thing but it's still a little disappointing," Kallian said.

They'd decided staying mostly clothed would be the best way to go, though Kallian had removed most of her armor, leaving her in her underclothes. Kallian ended up sitting between his legs, facing him, his robe hiked up to expose dark grey shorts. They were mostly on his bedroll.

He was kind of hard, already, and Kallian wasn't exactly trying to help with that, from where she was sitting.

"I don't exactly like the idea of flashing random people," he said.

"Your robe goes down to your ankles, more or less," Kallian said.

"I'm not going to not wear underwear just so it's easier for people to give me hand jobs," he said, laughing.

"Too bad," Kallian said.

It was less awkward than she'd feared in the back of her head, jerking him off like this, watching his face contort as she slowly increased the pace of her strokes, his pre-cum coating the ends of her fingers. He was also quieter than she'd expected, covering his mouth with a hand as he came.

"I can clean your hand off," he said, once he'd recovered himself.

"With magic?" she asked, a little stupidly. If he'd been Nelaros, she would have asked him to clean her hand off with his mouth, but he wasn't, was he. They were both doms. That was the problem of inexperience, she supposed, she only had one other person to compare Alim to in her head.

He nodded. "Yeah," he said.

"That's a good trick," she said. He tapped her on the inside of her wrist.

"You figure these kinds of things out pretty quickly," he said. "Though it's not exactly the kind of magic you write down."

"I can imagine."

"Your turn?" Alim asked.

"Sure."

It took longer than usual for her to get off, and at the end of it she just sighed and flopped onto her stomach. Not that Alim knew what usual was, for her, but it was

"Are you okay?"

"I accidentally turned myself off, I think," Kallian answered. Alim was pretty decent, better than—and therein lay the problem. "I keep thinking about Nelaros."

"Who?"

"My dead fiancé."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry," Kallian said. "He's just… he's the only other one. And those, at least, are pleasant memories."

"Yeah." Alim did the same trick for his own hand. "Well, that was a downer. I'm sorry, if we had more time I would have—"

"It's not your fault," Kallian said. "Sometimes, it just doesn't work."

They sat, looking at each other.

"I do want to try again. But later. And with fewer clothes." Kallian grinned.

"That'd be nice, I think," Alim said. "Awkward hand jobs are…"

"Awkward?"

He laughed. "Yeah."

Kallian poked her head outside the tent for just a moment. "We should get… more cleaned up," she said. "It'll be dark soon."

Half-way up the Tower of Ishal, in a room miraculously devoid of darkspawn, Kallian found a locked chest.

"Is this really the time?" Alistair asked. He'd watched her poke around with a tired, growing frustration. "We're already much later than we should be, with all these darkspawn. We don't have time for playing around."

"Just a moment," Kallian said. This was why she kept her lockpicking tools on herself at all times.

She smiled to herself as the locked clicked open after only a few moments.

"What's this?" she muttered to herself, pulling out two items. They were wildly different from each other, one a necklace made from some precious looking metal, the other a dagger. Without thinking, she stashed both in her light bag.

"You can't go around picking up everything you find in here," Alistair said. "You'd run out of room in your bag fairly quickly."

"This will be the only one," Kallian said. "I promise." She had just needed something simple to do that wasn't slaughter, for a moment. She'd been thinking too much about Devran and Jory's ashes. Duncan had put them each into an urn, to be sent back to their families. It had not all been for naught: the dagger, while aged and somewhat battered looking, seemed of better make than her own.

"Are you all right?" Alim asked.

"This is more fighting than I've ever done," she said. "It's exhausting."

"I know," Alim said. "It's like the Tower goes on forever." His face was drawn and pale. "I haven't used that much magic in… I haven't ever used that much magic at once before."

"You'll be able to rest after the battle," Kallian said. "We all will."

"There wasn't supposed to be this many darkspawn," Alistair said. "Something's gone wrong." He sighed. "You're finished?" he asked Kallian.

She nodded. "For a while, yeah."

"Okay," he said. "Let's keep going."

The ogre was worse than any of the other darkspawn Kallian had seen so far. It wasn't just a matter of size, although of course that was terrifying in itself. No, the worst part about the ogre was its tendency to pick up entire sections of the floor and fling them at her and her two companions. Thankfully, it only did this once, or else it could have very easily killed them.

Alim raised a wall of ice in front of it, keeping it (for the moment) from moving any closer to the three of them, even as it tried to charge. It seemed somewhat resistant to the magical effect itself, but one leg and an arm were still suck.

As it struggled, Alistair said, "I'm going in. I'll stay out of your line of sight."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Kallian asked.

He looked at her. "Oh, right," he said. "This is the first ogre you've ever seen. Trust me, as long as you don't let it touch you, you'll be fine." At that, he let out a loud yell, drawing all of its attention to himself, and moved towards it.

Kallian reached for her bow. "What are you going to do?" she asked Alim, pulling an arrow from her quiver.

"Lightning," he said.

"Can you do anything other than lightning and ice?" she asked. There was the healing, of course, which he'd already demonstrated to very useful effect that evening, but she wondered if it was possible for him to, for example, engulf the thing's head in flames.

He nodded, then shook his head. "I can technically do fire," he said. "But I won't, not for the moment."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to hit Alistair," he said. "Fire, unfortunately, doesn't just travel thirty feet and then stop. You have to… shape it, and my focus is pretty shattered."

"When we survive this fight, you'll have to work on your endurance," she said, conveniently failing to mention how tired she also felt.

"Yeah," he said. "Anyway, for now, lightning." He held up his staff, energy building around the knob at the top.

He released the bolt of blue energy just as Kallian loosed her first arrow. The lightning hit the ogre full in the chest, just as Alistair pushed his sword into the back of its right knee, and her arrow hit it square in the eye.

"Nice aim!" Alim said.

"Thanks!" Her father had taught her; something about staying connected to the Dalish, which had never made much sense, but at least left her able to effectively use bows.

It screamed, flailing at Alistair, who managed to roll away just in time to miss the brunt of the blow, but part of its massive hand still hit his shield, staggering him momentarily.

Alim used its distraction to hit it with another bolt of lightning, this one hitting the thing square in the face. The smell of cooked, rotting meat reached Kallian's nose. It was somehow worse than the already horrendous smell of darkspawn.

It grabbed at its face, staggering backwards as it howled again.

This gave Alistair ample opportunity to stab it in the neck from behind. With a final howl, it fell forwards into the ice, impaling itself in the chest.

There was a beat of silence as the three of them waited to see if it was really dead. When it didn't move, Alistair exhaled and looked at the two elves.

"Well," he said. "We're much later than we should be, but," he nodded in the direction of the spot where the signal fire would be lit. "You can do fire magic, then? This wouldn't need a ball of it, or anything, just enough of a spark to light the kindling."

"Yeah," Alim said. "I can."

He lit the signal.

The last thing Kallian remembered from that night was what could only have been the flapping of massive wings.

The Empress

Below him, the crowd of darkspawn spread to the horizon, an infinite multitude of seething bodies, all waiting with an awful anticipation for the coming slaughter.

Above him, the high dragon, the archdemon, roared, spewing purple fire.

Where was he? What was he? He had a name, he was a sure of it, but it lay just beyond his reach, his mind grasping at nothing, his tongue as heavy as lead when he tried to cry out.

Alim woke with a start in a strange bed, in a room he did not recognize when he opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was lighting the signal fire, even that simple act more difficult than it had any right to be. Reaching for his staff, he realized, first, that he did not know where it was, and second, that he was almost completely nude.

"Ah, you are awake."

He looked up to see Morrigan, the apostate he, Kallian, Alistair, and the two failed Wardens had encountered only the day before. Had it only been a day? Walking through the woods to find some treaties and fighting his way up a tower felt so different from each other, it was hard to believe it had all happened within such a short period of time.

"Where am I?"

"You are in our cottage," Morrigan said. "Your friends have been quite worried, you have been by far the longest asleep."

"What happened?" Alim said. He tried to get up. He had to find his staff, but most importantly, he had to find the others.

"Your fellow Grey Wardens, the ones not with you in that tower, are dead. So too is your King, betrayed by those he held dear. Or so my mother tells me, I confess I am so interested in the affairs of the world as she, and her rescuing you was a rare exception." She shook her head. "I am meant to tell you to get dressed and join your friends in the daylight."

He realized she held a packet in her hands. "Where's my staff?" he asked.

"Leaning against the wall in the corner of the room." She tossed the packet of clothes at him, as well as what looked like some kind of cured meat, and left the room without another word.

What she had said only hit him when he was about halfway through getting dressed. He sat heavily on the bed, suddenly unable to find the strength to stand.

King Cailan, Duncan, the Grey Wardens he had barely tried to get to know, all dead? How could it be, there had been a plan, and despite the unexpected presence of darkspawn, he and Kallian and Alistair had executed their part of it to the best of their abilities.

Oh, Maker, _Alistair_. Alim barely knew him, had not even noticed the collar he wore until Kallian had pointed it out, but even without that it was clear he had been close to Duncan.

With that, Alim decided. He would grieve later, once he had seen Kallian and Alistair and shown them he was okay. He would grieve much later, in fact, and after everyone else had felt their piece.

He saw Kallian first. She surprised him by running at him, full speed, and hugging him with enough force that he felt as though he were about to fall over. He returned the hug. "Hey," he said. "What's this?"

"I'm sick to death of near-death experiences, this is my third in a week and a half," Kallian said. It wasn't exactly an answer, but it felt like enough of one.

She broke away. "Alistair's a mess."

Alim winced. "I can imagine."

"I had to order him to eat, which isn't a good sign," she continued. "Apparently he also thought we were about to die for a while, which couldn't have helped."

"Where is he?"

Kallian jerked her head in the direction of the door, which Alim had not previously noticed. "He's outside," she said. "Did Morrigan give you that weird jerky?"

"Yeah," Alim said. "I ate it. It was salty."

"I guess it's better than nothing," Kallian said. "I'll admit, I haven't been that hungry since the joining."

"We'll have to ask… Alistair, I guess, about that."

"Yeah," Kallian said. "I guess he is the only one left to ask."


End file.
